J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Zecca (Mint), Libreria Sansoviniana, Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, from the Bacino; Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana towards Sunset 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Zecca (Mint), Libreria Sansoviniana, Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Venice, from the Bacino; Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana towards Sunset’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Verso:
The Zecca (Mint), Libreria Sansoviniana, Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, from the Bacino; Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana towards Sunset 1840
D31818
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 14a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Campanile, &c., with the Salute in distance’): ‘with scaffolding’.1 He noted: ‘2 sketches. One of Dog. & Salute; one of Campe, Zecca & D’s Pal.’2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘scaffolding on cuspide’.3 Frequently shown in Turner’s sketches, it provides evidence for the dating of such views to 1840 (see the tour Introduction).
With the page turned horizontally, the main view is north from the Bacino, with the Zecca (Mint) and Libreria Sansoviniana on the left with the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) beyond the Piazzetta, where only the right-hand column is indicated clearly. Towards the right are slight indications of the pinnacles and westernmost dome of the Basilica behind the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace).
At the top left the prospect is continued to the left with the view west to the porch of the Dogana and the domes of Santa Maria della Salute at the entrance to the Grand Canal beyond a moored ship, silhouetted by the sinking sun indicated to the right. The sketches on folio 15 recto opposite (D31819) are from about the same point, looking to the south.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1010.
2
Ibid., opposite p.1010.
3
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1010.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Zecca (Mint), Libreria Sansoviniana, Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Piazzetta and Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Venice, from the Bacino; Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana towards Sunset 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-zecca-mint-libreria-sansoviniana-campanile-of-san-marco-r1196712, accessed 26 April 2024.